City watchdog calls for more preventive street repair work

The best way for Chicago to keep roads in good shape is to seal cracks and do other preventive maintenance before potholes develop, Inspector General Joseph Ferguson said in a report.

The best way for Chicago to keep roads in good shape is to seal cracks and do other preventive maintenance before potholes develop, Inspector General Joseph Ferguson said in a report. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

Winter pothole season is bearing down on Chicago, and the city inspector general released a report Tuesday saying the Department of Transportation could do a better, less expensive job of keeping the streets in good shape by doing more preventive maintenance.

The raggedy condition of Chicago streets is near the top of residents' list of complaints about government services, a situation Mayor Rahm Emanuel has tried to address in recent years with a series of high-profile announcements about shifting more workers to pothole repair teams and instituting a grid system in a bid to fix pockmarked pavement faster.

But Inspector General Joseph Ferguson's report says the best way to improve roads would be to work on streets before potholes develop. Ferguson's office issued a report saying CDOT's pavement management program is "neither efficient nor cost-effective."

If the city were to allocate $2.9 million to sealing cracks and other "preventive maintenance" rather than earmarking nearly all its road repair budget to filling potholes and other "worst first" repaving work, streets around Chicago would stay smoother longer, require fewer major overhauls and save the city at least $4.6 million per year, Ferguson's report states.

And CDOT should more frequently survey the condition of pavement to create a more accurate database of which streets need work. The surveys should include side streets rather than just main thoroughfares, the report says. Currently, the city relies on findings from aldermen and others to determine which side streets to repave, according to Ferguson.

CDOT spokeswoman Susan Hofer said in a statement that the agency is already undertaking some of Ferguson's suggestions. "CDOT appreciates the (Office of Inspector General's) work and has already begun to implement the recommendations in its report," Hofer said. "While this audit looks back to 2000, CDOT initiated a comprehensive pavement management program in 2013 as part of its efforts to implement a proactive pavement management strategy that is aligned with best practices. CDOT's pavement management program aims to better maintain Chicago's streets in a cost-effective way that extends pavement life and meets the mission of CDOT to provide safe, usable roads."

But Hofer said CDOT intends to continue to allow aldermen to make "informed decisions" about residential street roadwork through the aldermanic menu program that provides each member of the City Council wide leeway each year on how to spend $1.32 million in their wards.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 23, 2015, in the News section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "Pothole prevention is watchdog fix - Report says road maintenance cheaper, more efficient than repair hodgepodge" —
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